Even hard-right U.S. Republicans, such as Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz, have attacked the Canadian prime minister.

That all of this is happening is not surprising. What is surprising is that Trudeau seems to care what these people think.

His father wouldn’t have cared. Pierre Trudeau wouldn’t have snubbed Fidel Castro just to mollify social media, Ted Cruz and Donald Trump.

He would have gone proudly to the old villain’s funeral.

And in spite of themselves, Canadians would have loved him for going.

First off, anyone who thinks Justin Trudeau gave Castro's send off a pass because of something Marco Rubio or Ted Cruz said is clearly out to lunch.Second of all, if Walkom's such a huge Castro fan, why didn't he go to the funeral?Toronto Star readers would have loved him for that.

UNITED NATIONS — The president of the United Nations General Assembly wore a scarf with the colors of the Palestinian flag around his neck on Tuesday while addressing a special session of the 193-member assembly to mark Palestinian solidarity day.

The UN’s “International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People” in marked annually on November 29, the anniversary of the United Nations recognizing the Partition Plan that called for the creation of the State of Israel and of an independent Arab state.

Donning the colors of the Palestinian flag as well as a black-and-white keffiyeh associated with Palestinians, Peter Thomson of Fiji, the president of the 71st Session of the General Assembly, said peace between Israel and the Palestinians was “fundamental to our efforts to realize the inalienable rights of the Palestinian people, and to ensure that they are able to enjoy lives of dignity, opportunity, prosperity, and equality.”

“However, the pursuit of peace has been mired by continuing terror attacks against civilians, and brutal acts of violence by both sides,” Thomson said. He did not note that the majority of the stabbing, shooting and car-ramming attacks that began last year — and have seen a significant drop in recent weeks — have been perpetrated by Palestinians.

The senior Trudeau received rare permission from the Maoist government to tour China in 1960 at the height of the Great Leap Forward. Due to the forced collectivization of farms and the press-ganging of millions into unsafe factories, at least 30 million starved or were worked to death.

Pierre Trudeau must have seen the brutality, but his book on his travels mentions not a word. Instead, he praised Mao for the advancement his government had made in education and health care.

Sound familiar?

Why, yes; yes it does. And it underscores the sad reality that, for the Trudeaus, père et fils, and for those impaired by the same worldview (including, it must be said, Barack Obama), individual human rights can be safely ignored at times when "the people" are in the process of building a collectivist Utopia.Update: The only sort of Marxophilia that makes any sense at all:

Some years ago, Ms. Khan and her cleric hubby, Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, were the driving force behind the notorious Ground Zero mosque. Fortunately, sanity prevailed, and construction of what amounted to a symbol of Islamic triumphalism on this hallowed ground never came to pass.Don't think for a moment, though, that that put Daisy and her man off their game. They regrouped and reconstituted themselves as, what else?, Muslims who were more than keen to partake in the "interfaith" crapola.

Khan, wife of imam Feisal Abdul Rauf and his partner in creating the Cordoba House Islamic center on the edges of Ground Zero, has (if this profile is to be believed) one true goal: Islam uber alles.The organization she presides over seeks to glorify Muslims, not (as she claims) to promote interfaith projects. Her focus is Islam, not America. She has skipped out on work (she boasts), shirking her obligations to her clients and her employers, abandoning her responsibilities as a member of American secular society, secretly slipping out of her office in order to attend prayer sessions at a local mosque – while, of course, accepting full salary for a job she only performed part-time. Imagine if a Catholic, a Protestant, a Jew, tried to get away with that.

Not only was Justin Trudeau's effusive praise for the odious Fidel Castro not "odd," as Kelly McParland characterizes it, in a way it was actually most welcome. It finally revealed to the world that our prime minister is exactly what he appears to be--a nice-looking chap with a good head of hair and lots of silly, puerile notions bouncing around in what might be charitably described as a pinball machine of a brain.

The icky romance with Canada's hunky prime minister may have finally expired--and hurray for that. Sadly, the same cannot be said of the Left's romance with Castro, which will endure long after Cubans' experience of their ruthless dictator is but a distant memory.

Castro championed the Palestinian freedom struggle and became a friend of Yasser Arafat, leader of the Palestine Liberation Organization. Cuba offered the Palestinians military aid, while Palestinian students could be found at universities in Cuba.

“Cuba has always been a strong supporter of Palestinians in all realms: political, military, vocational training,” Mansour Tahboub, former acting director of the Arafat Foundation, recently told Al Jazeera. “The Cubans trained Palestinian cadres, and Fidel himself was a staunch advocate of the Palestinian quest for freedom and independence.”

It's pretty rich of Yousef Jabareen to kvetch about Palestinians being deprived of rights and power when he himself sits as an elected member of Israel's parliament, the Knesset.

In terms of "human rights," that's certainly more than a Jew can expect in say, Jordan, where Jews are not allowed to be citizens, or indeed in any country where sharia law, which accords Jews and Christians a second class status (as it also does to Muslim women), is in effect.

For that matter, Mr. Jabareen has far more "rights" in the Jewish state of Israel--where, last time I checked, all road signs are written in Hebrew and Arabic--than the ordinary Palestinian has in the Palestinian territories, including Gaza, which is ruled with an iron fist by the jihadi terrorist organization, Hamas.

Under what circumstances would the Palestinian Knesset member's comments re Israel having much to learn from Canada be valid? Only if and when Canada were to find itself in Israel's situation as the sole democracy in a neighbourhood ruled by Islamic despots and absolute monarchs who have a vested interest in stripping it of its identity, in Israel's case, as the world's one and only Jewish state.

The Democratic party is an odd apparatus in which most of the power is held by sanctimonious little old liberal white ladies with graduate degrees and very high incomes — Hillary Rodham Clinton, Elizabeth Warren, Randi Weingarten — while the manpower, the vote-power, and the money-power (often in the form of union dues) comes from a disproportionately young and non-white base made up of people who, if they are doing well, might earn one-tenth of the half-million dollars a year Weingarten was paid as the boss of the teachers’ union. They are more likely to be cutting the grass in front of Elizabeth Warren’s multi-million-dollar mansion than moving into one of their own. They roll their eyes at Hillary Rodham Clinton’s risible “abuela” act, having actual abuelas of their own.

From Conservative leadership candidate Maxime Bernier: "I can'tbelieve our PM is expressing 'deep sorrow' and calling [Castro a] 'legendary revolutionary' and 'remarkable leader,'" Bernier said on Twitter.Bernier also called Castro a "despicable dictator who killed and imprisoned thousands of innocents and drove away in exile more than a million.

From former PM Stephen Harper's son Ben: The younger Harper tweeted, "Castro was a monstrous leader, and the world is better off now he's dead."He also tweeted that Trudeau's statement is "an embarrassment for Canada."

From Florida Senator Marco Rubio: U.S. Senator for Florida Marco Rubio...questioned if Trudeau's statement was real or a parody and said it's shameful and embarrassing if it's real.

Sadly, Senator Rubio, it only sounds like a parody but I can assure you it's all too real. (One wonders if Justin, who was in Cuba only the other week, will pay homage to his dad's pal by showing up as his funeral.)

President Barack Obama said “history will record and judge” former Cuban leader Fidel Castro‘s impact on the island nation and offered a “hand of friendship” to the Cuban people in a statement Saturday on Castro’s death at 90 years old.

“We know that this moment fills Cubans–in Cuba and in the United States–with powerful emotions, recalling the countless ways in which Fidel Castro altered the course of individual lives, families, and of the Cuban nation,” he said.

Well, yes, as someone who subjected many of his citizens to firing squads and decades of imprisonment, he certainly "altered" the "course" of their lives. But, sorry, Barry, you get no props at all for that mush-mouthed tribute. (One could expect a similarly imbecilic reaction were the Grandiose Ayatollah, another tyrant for whom Barack manifested a soft head spot, to suddenly shuffle off this mortal coil. At which point, I'd have to reach for a stiff drink to numb my outrage/gag reflex.)

It is time spokespeople from some immigrant communities take a hard look at likely repercussions of their own actions. When Canadians have to endure this housing proposal and the upcoming “Reviving the Islamic Spirit” conference - a gathering to promote orthodox belief - it is hardly surprising that political leaders like Kellie Leitch call for a Canadian values test for immigrants.

Tolerance of “the other”, even in an avowedly multicultural society like Canada, must be limited.

As surely as we cannot possibly tolerate polygamy or the mistreatment of women, we cannot approve of discriminatory housing. Such actions cause rancor with host societies and ultimately make victims of immigrants themselves.

While most Canadian Muslims are well integrated into Canadian society and are happy to interact with other Canadians, fundamentalists and Islamists continue to draw justified negative press through their outrageous demands for faith accommodations.

They withdraw from the multicultural process by locking themselves up from the outside world. Whether it is exemptions from music class for their children, or creating their own sharia-compliant silos, these fundamentalists insist on imposing their inflexible mores on others.

Fundamentalists asserting these rights on the basis of Charter freedoms must assert whatever cultural identities they have within a common context and participate in the multicultural experience without reservation.

To be candid, this is an Islamist issue. I see no devout Hindus, Sikhs, Jews or Christians seeking such far-reaching faith accommodations.

I'm sure there are a few non-Islamists among the kvetchers, but, in the main, she's no doubt correct. The problem, however, is with the social doctrine of multiculturalism itself, an ethos/mythology borne of leftist guilt which downgrades the mainstream culture even as it venerates other cultures and sees them as being the mainstream's superior. There is thus no reason for "fundamentalists and Islamists" (same difference, no?) to change so long as "multiculturalism" remains in effect.

While campus radicals fulminate regularly against Israel and America, give tacit support to these countries’ enemies, and heap vitriol on the Jewish state and its supporters—much of it exceeding what would be considered reasonable or rational criticism of a democratic state—they regularly cloak themselves with the protective shield of “academic free speech,” that sacrosanct philosophy which has come to mean that liberal academics can express themselves, even loathsomely, and expect no one to question their poisonous rhetoric or answer back with a vigorous defense from the other side. When the Left derides Israel and promotes false, biased, or hateful ideas about Zionism, the Israel government, or military policies, and defenders speak back and commentators call them on their defective views, the common claim is that the outspoken critics of Israel have been “silenced” by the accusation of anti-Semitism and that their free speech is being “suppressed.”

When campus radicals and Leftist professors are not moaning about how the dreaded “Israel Lobby” attempts to suppress all criticism of Israel, or complaining about how any scrutiny of radical Islam, Palestinian terror, or Arab intransigency constitutes “hate speech” that will intimidate or harass Muslims, they have found other means to insure that countervailing opinions about Israel and the Palestinians are shut out. With greater frequency, Muslim student groups, radical, anti-Israel professors, and even college officials themselves have taken it upon themselves to either restrict the ability of conservative or pro-Israel speakers to appear on campuses, or to deny them access to campus altogether. The radical group, Students for Justice in Palestine, even has a policy of trying to shout down pro-Israel speakers, preventing them from speaking with disruptions and heckling.

When confronted with the possibility that a speaker will voice ideas contrary to their own reflexive ideology, anti-Israel activists often try to have the speaking event cancelled in advance by college officials. Rather than have to go through the intellectually inconvenient process of having to confront views other than their own, anti-Israel, anti-American groups try to demonize and marginalize the views of conservative speakers—in advance of their visits—by painting them as Islamophobes, Zionists, right wing hate-mongers, or fundamentalists. Appeals to university administrators by these victim groups commonly claim that the prospective speaker is known for “hate speech,” that his or her views are too controversial or “hurtful” for campus audiences, or that the political views of a speaker are so controversial and potentially offensive to Muslims that the speaker should not even be able to speak at all—even if some students on campus do wish to hear the views.

The university campus is thus like a petri dish for the pathology, with hyper-sensitive snowflakes e'er alert for the slightest offense, and cynical academics therefore in a position to easily control them. And, of course, pusillanimous administrators who lack the backbone to stand up for sanity and the free flow of ideas.

Thursday, November 24, 2016

"I think the destruction of ISIS [Islamic State] should be everybody's priority, and I keep saying this is where the global war is today. We look at it as a war, a civil war inside of Islam, but we can't do it without the help of Christians and Jews, and other religions and other nations, because this thing is not just located in Syria or Iraq, it's in Libya we're dealing with Boko Haram and Shabab, you have the Taliban, and actually, in this neck of the woods, you also have [other] challenges. So unless we look at this in a global, holistic approach, we're never going to win."

Critics assailed the [Trudeau government] move to resume funding UNRWA, noting that it had repeatedly been linked to Hamas, the Palestinian terrorist organization, and that teachers and other UNRWA staff had been posting anti-Semitic material online, along with praise of Hitler and support for the Palestinian side in their conflict with Israel.

In announcing the allocation, International Development Minister Marie-Claude Bibeau said, “Millions of Palestinian refugees across the Middle East have the right to receive basic services such as health care and to send their children to school.

“We want to see Palestinian refugee children in classrooms where they can learn universal values of tolerance and respect. Vulnerable Palestinians deserve all the opportunities they can to contribute positively to their communities and Canada’s funding will help to better the lives of millions of refugees.”

The allocation announcement included assurances from the government that it would include “robust oversight mechanism and an enhanced accountability network,” such as “screening of UNRWA staff, strong anti-terrorism provisions in the funding agreement and training of UNRWA employees on appropriate and neutral use of social media.”...

You mean UNRWA will now sever its connections to eliminationist Hamas and teach all the widdle kiddies "tikkun olam"?How awesome!And, more to the point, how utterly deranged!Then again, you can understand wee Justin's confusion. Had UNRWA, arguably the UN's most pernicious body, been called something else--something that excluded the word "welfare," which is like catnip for Liberals, and that more accurately described its activities ("Hamas-Assisting Refugee Manipulators," or "HARM," say)--perhaps it would have been more difficult to justify this lamebrain and, yes, blatantly anti-Israel/anti-Jewish move.On second thought, maybe not.Update: Just dashed off this one to the CJN:

International Development Minister Marie-Claude Bibeau says she wants "to see Palestinian refugee children in classrooms where they can learn universal values of tolerance and respect." If that's the case, it's even more difficult to understand why the Trudeau government would hand $25 million to UNRWA, which has close ties to the jihadi terrorist organization Hamas, and which is therefore as likely to educate Palestinian refugee children in "tikkun olam" as Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is to sprout wings and a forehead horn.

Then again, considering that UNRWA is arguably the United Nations' most despicable and pernicious agency--and that's saying something given the manifest Israel-hate of several other candidates, including UNESCO and the UN "human rights" body--I'd say a unicorn Trudeau is the far likelier prospect.

Tuesday, November 22, 2016

His bad (according to Nicholas Burns, a former State Department spokesman that no one has ever heard of)? He was "mean" to a despicable jihad-waging Jew-hater (at a time when everyone at the UN was laying out the welcome mat for him):

In 1995 Yasser Arafat, the head of the Palestinian Liberation Organization, was in town to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the UN. He was attending a special concert by the New York Philharmonic for world leaders at the Lincoln Center — until the middle of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, when Mayor Giuliani had him tossed out.

"There's a difference between the diplomacy conducted at the United Nations, and then parties that are given to celebrate," Giuliani told NPR at the time. "It would be enormously offensive to the members of my host committee to have either Fidel Castro or Yasser Arafat because of the murder they've engaged in over a period of time."

Pro-Israel hardliners applauded the move, but at a time when the Clinton administration was pushing hard for an Israeli-Palestinian peace deal, it was a big embarrassment for the White House.

"Mayor Giuliani was so brusque, so in-your-face in his treatment of Arafat and others, that it really I thought crossed the line of where a mayor of New York should be," Burns says...

A German court on Monday ruled that a group of Islamists did not break the law in forming "sharia police" street patrols and telling people to stop drinking, gambling and listening to music.

The ultra-conservative Muslim group around German Salafist convert Sven Lau sparked public outrage with their vigilante patrols in the western city of Wuppertal in 2014, but prosecutors have struggled to build a case against them.

The city's district court ruled that the seven accused members of the group did not breach a ban on political uniforms when they approached people while wearing orange vests bearing the words "Sharia Police".

Judges said there could only be a violation of the law - originally aimed against street movements such as the early Nazi party - if the uniforms were "suggestively militant or intimidating", a court spokesman said.

In this case, they found that the vests were not threatening and noted that one witness said he thought the men were part of a bachelor party.

The same court had already thrown out the case last year, but was overruled on appeal by a higher court which agreed with prosecutors that the ban on uniforms could be applied in this case.

Monday's verdict is not yet final and may still be appealed.

The "sharia police" members walked the streets of Wuppertal in September 2014, telling nightclub-goers to refrain from drinking alcohol and listening to music, and arcade customers not to play games for money...

Let's see if they really have the chutzpah to elect a guy with this ghastly CV:

Despite the furor over Trump aide Steve Bannon’s alleged antisemitism, there’s been virtually no media attention paid to the person likely to become the next chair of the Democratic National Committee, Congressman Keith Ellison (D-MN).

The man poised to head the Democrat Party was a spokesman for the Nation of Islam (NOI) well into his 30s, who publicly spewed antisemitism and, later in life, as a Congressional candidate, knowingly accepted $50,000 in campaign contributions given and raised by Islamic radicals who openly supported terrorism and were leaders of front groups for Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood.

And once in office as a congressman, Ellison more than hinted that 9/11 was an inside job carried out to create a pretext for war against Muslims – a trope often pushed by antisemites who claim Israeli or “Mossad” complicity, by comparing the toppling of the Twin Towers to the Reichstag Fire, the infamous 1933 arson of the German Parliament building, which the Nazis pinned on Communists to gain majority control of the government.

To be clear, Ellison has never genuinely repudiated his past antisemitism or his close association with the terror-tied Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) or its co-founder, Nihad Awad, who has publicly supported Islamic terrorism...

The College is widely known for its alternative curriculum, socially liberal politics, focus on portfolios rather than distribution requirements, and reliance on narrative evaluations instead of grades and GPAs. In some fields, it is among the top undergraduate institutions in percentage of graduates who enroll in graduate school. Fifty-six percent of its alumni have at least one graduate degree and it is ranked 30th among all US colleges in the percentage of its graduates who go on to attain a doctorate degree (notably first among history doctorates).[3]

Dear Parents: you may as well take the money earmarked for this college's tuition and turn it into mulch. In fact, it's likely to do far more good fertilizing soil than young brains.

Monday, November 21, 2016

While Birth of a Nation may not have been the platform she had hoped for, Union isn’t giving up her megaphone anytime soon. In the far-reaching profile — worth reading in full — Union describes the “bullshit” that comes with being a black actress (“When do you stand up and point out every micro-aggression, and when do you stand down so you’re not the angry black person all the time?”), learning to embrace her blackness, and how she is calling out women in Hollywood like Kate Upton, Lena Dunham, and Amy Schumer for their “white girl privilege.” Union says she has already had one conversation about these issues with Dunham, and has suggested more conversations with white women in Hollywood would “help to explain the oppressive systems that have benefited and allowed them to say these careless, insensitive and offensive things.”

In fact, it could be argued that it's Gabrielle Union, a standard Hollywood beauty with a standard Hollywood body type, and not those puddings Amy and Lena, who has the definite advantage.

The format consisted of a two-against-one setup, [U of T professor and trans pronoun-balker Jordan] Peterson against two other professors — lawyer Brenda Cossman, who is the director of sexual diversity studies at the university, and the University of British Columbia’s Dr. Mary Bryson, a professor in language and literacy and in the Institute for Gender, Race, Sexuality and Social Justice.

(Bryson’s official profile on the UBC site uses the pronoun “they” to refer to her, as in, “Throughout Mary’s 27 years at UBC, they have served in many senior administrative roles…” I take from this that “they” is her preferred pronoun, but I decline to use it.

She began by immediately denouncing Peterson, comparing him to the late Philippe Rushton (or, as Bryson spelled it, “Philip”), another psychology professor at the University of Western Ontario who made controversial links between the brain sizes of the three major races and concluded that Orientals (Asians, as they would now be called) were smarter than Whites and Whites smarter than Blacks.

In her opening written statement, Bryson quoted from David Suzuki’s opening remarks at the 1989 debate between the two men: “I do not want to be here. I do not want to dignify this man and his ideas in public debate.”

She continued throughout to refer to Peterson as “this man” who was making “knowledge claims as a professor” without “peer-reviewed scholarship”, at one point declared that “the goal of reducing inequality” has “always been the fundamental goal of education” and in her closing remarks suggested the U of T ought to consider “an apology for any damages to the right of safety and the right to humanity on the part of trans and gender-diverse people at the university.”

Spoken like a true believer. In another time and another place, she would have made Robespierre--or Stalin--proud.

This will not sit well with activists who demand ownership of their pronouns, and that others abide strictly by their wishes.

There are people with vaginas, and with penises, who regard themselves as "non-binary," or "genderfluid" and who want to be referred to as "xe" or "ne" or "ve" or "hir" or "thon" or "zhe," and are building aspirational language constructions to suit their wishes.

For example: "Xe likes xemself."

As one student protester's sign declared: "My pronouns are not up for discussion."

But of course, they are.

Genderless English pronouns are neologisms, invented to suit a worldview. Following the logic of today's young warriors, I could begin demanding that my colleagues refer to me as "blort" or "zonge" with the expectation that they would respectfully begin doing so.

Still, universities — the earliest adopters of radical language — are falling into line, advising faculty to go along with whatever anyone specifies as his or her personal pronoun (my very use of "his or her" would be regarded in the academy as heteronormative and offensive).

Macdonald makes a pitch for what he sees as a more "sensible," less "jarring" approach:

CBC reporter Carolyn Dunn, for example, recently filed a story about a four-year-old boy who identifies as a girl, and whose mother prefers gender-free pronouns.

Dunn's report referred to the child as "they," perhaps the first time the singular they has been used on-air by a CBC reporter. She actually referred to "their penis."

But that's as far as CBC is prepared to go, at least right now. The rule for CBC journalists is to "respect individual preferences while keeping in mind that clarity for the audience is paramount."...

If referring to one little boy's sexual organ by using the plural "their penis" is "sensible," then I'm a blort.

Sunday, November 20, 2016

Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East (CJPME) applauded the move, noting that in recent weeks UNRWA had cut staff and services because of budget shortfalls.

“The Trudeau government has finally differentiated itself from the [Stephen] Harper government in regards to the Middle East,” CJPME president Thomas Woodley said in a news release.

The Trudeau government has finally shown its true colours, more like. And phooey on it for that.Update:This is what our dopey Trudeaupian government is supporting:

“Peace starts here” is an ironic slogan for UNRWA to bear.

Hamas’s openly declared agenda is to violently advance the “right of return” to Arab villages that existed before 1948 provides the energy for UNRWA employed Hamas educators openly promote “jihad and martyrdom.” , while perpetuating their permanent refugee status . UNRWA’s teachers, many of whom are residents of the UNRWA refugee camps, are overwhelmingly affiliated with Hamas and its partner, the Islamic Bloc. The Islamic Bloc monopolizes the UNRWA teachers’ union and ensures a climate of radicalism in all schools, with the goal of convincing students to enroll in Hamas’ military wing subsequent to graduation. The result is a substantiated education of terror and a culture embedded with Hamas principles and a rising generation of violent radicals.

UNRWA faces serious allegations that they misuse the $1.2 billion given to them by the United Nations[4]. UNRWA employs over 30,000 workers, who are members of the Palestinian community, and who live in the UNRWA e camps themselves[5]. These employees include the teachers, summer camp counselors, and directors for the local UNRWA schools, where the textbook content emanates from the Palestinian Authority...

A Swedish union has set up a hotline for workers to report instances of “mansplaining” as part of a weeklong effort to raise awareness of a certain kind of condescending elocution that men use to explain to women things they already understand.

Well, actually, it’s not all men who do it, of course, but a certain kind of man. You know him: He is probably getting ready to mansplain this article to you.

The hotline, which is temporary and open to men and women, was set up by Unionen, a trade union that represents about 600,000 private-sector employees in Sweden and describes itself as the largest white-collar union in the world.

“Our objective is to contribute to awareness and start a discussion which we hope will be the first step in changing the way we treat each other and talk about each other in the workplace,” Jennie Zetterström, a union spokeswoman, said in an email on Wednesday.

“It’s important to create awareness about how seemingly small things that we do or say add up to a larger issue.”...

Better they should have a "progressivesplaining" hotline to account for such asininity.

Friday, November 18, 2016

My seminar students at McGill University told me that you can't say anything at this university without being accused of being sexist, homophobic, Islamophobic, fascist, or racist, and then being threatened with punitive measures. They felt silenced by the oppressive atmosphere of political correctness. Nothing significant — sex, religion, relationships, public policy, race, immigration, or multiculturalism — could be discussed. Only the acceptable opinions could be expressed without nasty repercussions.

It is generally held today in the West, if not elsewhere, that diversity is a good thing. Diversity in origin, ethnicity, gender, race, and sexual preference is now regarded as not only desirable, but mandatory. Universities strive to increase their physical diversity. The currently accepted theory in Western academia is that physical diversity reflects diversity of experience and thus an enriching diversity of viewpoint.

McGill's committee on diversity proposed that we no longer define excellence as intellectual achievement, but as diversity. Their view is that a university populated by folks of different colours or having different sexual preferences is by virtue of this diversity "excellent."

However, among this excellent diversity, what is not encouraged or accepted is diversity of opinion. Only politically correct views are welcome...

In other words, folks of different colours, provenances and sexual preferences--all singing in unison from the identical song sheet: a superficial "diversity" that becomes a tool to keep a far more profound and crucial diversity (and a key factor in the mainentance of a free society) in check--the diversity of thought/opinion/ideas.

It is clear that there is an innate human yearning to be/do "good" in the service of an impossibility, i.e. a Heaven (or Eden, or Utopia) on Earth. On North American university campuses, this yearning is manifested as a desire for "social justice." However, if you happen to be Muslim (or have a hankering to become Muslim), these sorts of "social justice" yearnings can end up being channeled into, well, the jihad (my bolds):

A recent analysis written for the online Indian news outlet FirstPost attempts to provide some possible answers to a burning question around the world: Why are Muslims are losing their faith to extremist groups and joining Islamic State?

Women who join ISIS are usually converts and neo-Muslims. The author states that they “are not fascinated towards the traditional spiritual Islam or progressive Islamic thinking. But rather, they are driven by a network of half-educated, misguided and extremist youths—most of them being males.

“Scores of bright students of science, medicine and engineering have reportedly terminated their education aiming for an Islamic state or shariah-controlled zone where everything is ‘pure’, ‘perfect’ and idealistic.”

The fact that many of ISIS’ new members are not only not raised with any sort of extremist religious views, but are also -- like many secular youths today -- college educated, makes the trend even more disturbing. These youths appear on the outside to not be all that different from their peers who do not join such groups.

But, there is something going on inside of these young people that makes them susceptible to such groups – possibly, this desire for an idealized world divorced from crass materialistic concerns of the West...

The "something" that's "going on" is, quite simply, the siren call of the jihad imperative, a sound that can be especially appealing if you're young, Muslim and keen to "perfect" the world.

The morning after Donald Trump was elected President of the United States, Barack Obama summoned staff members to the Oval Office. Some were fairly junior and had never been in the room before. They were sombre, hollowed out, some fighting tears, humiliated by the defeat, fearful of autocracy’s moving vans pulling up to the door. Although Obama and his people admit that the election results caught them completely by surprise—“We had no plan for this,” one told me—the President sought to be reassuring.

“This is not the apocalypse,” Obama said. History does not move in straight lines; sometimes it goes sideways, sometimes it goes backward. A couple of days later, when I asked the President about that consolation, he offered this: “I don’t believe in apocalyptic—until the apocalypse comes. I think nothing is the end of the world until the end of the world.”

Obama’s insistence on hope felt more willed than audacious. It spoke to the civic duty he felt to prevent despair not only among the young people in the West Wing but also among countless Americans across the country. At the White House, as elsewhere, dread and dejection were compounded by shock. Administration officials recalled the collective sense of confidence about the election that had persisted for many months, the sense of balloons and confetti waiting to be released. Last January, on the eve of his final State of the Union address, Obama submitted to a breezy walk-and-talk interview in the White House with the “Today” show. Wry and self-possessed, he told Matt Lauer that no matter what happened in the election he was sure that “the overwhelming majority” of Americans would never submit to Donald Trump’s appeals to their fears, that they would see through his “simplistic solutions and scapegoating.”

“So when you stand and deliver that State of the Union address,” Lauer said, “in no part of your mind and brain can you imagine Donald Trump standing up one day and delivering the State of the Union address?”

Obama chuckled. “Well,” he said, “I can imagine it in a ‘Saturday Night’ skit.”...

The fact that he could imagine it only as an SNL skit--and not as something that could actually come to pass--speaks volumes re why his side lost.

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Scaramouche is my nom de Web. My real name is Mindy G. Alter, and I like to think of myself as a free speecher with a sense of humour. My bailiwick: fighting on behalf of all the good things that free speech helps safeguard, and doing my utmost to highlight the malevolence and imbicilities of those who oppose freedom, whomever they may be.